CRITICISM ASIDE, DAVID HARTMAN RULES MORNING TV

In Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, a long-suffering friend of the Wild West duo described Butch as "the most affable man I ever met" and the Kid's deadly six-gun as "the fastest I ever saw." The man never knew David Hartman.

When it comes to affability, the host of ABC's Good Morning America has no peer. His 6-foot-5-inch frame is all angles and bones, and his folksy grin would put a mouse at ease in the middle of a cat show. His eclectic mind can jump with consistent clarity from Mideast politics to baseball or from ancient history to high-tech, but behind the cameras and beneath the warmth lurks a rumored shadow of Sundance, the gunslinger who also just happened to be No. 1 in his specialty.

Foremost, however, is David Hartman in the role of affable Butch, charming all the color he can get out of guests who flock to his morning news show.

"As far as television news is concerned, there's been almost an arrogance, a thinking that if something is important it's okay to present it in a boring way," he said. "The other attitude is that if it is important and you do it in an interesting way that somehow the material loses credibility. That's nonsense. If guests are dull or uninteresting, it's our fault, not theirs."

For the last five years, Hartman, a former actor without a journalistic credential to his name, consistently has won the ratings race against the veteran reporters who compete against him on NBC's Today show and the CBS Morning News by making guests "interesting." Critics have sneered that he is all show biz, glitz and fluff, but every morning 6.5 million people tune in. George Merlis, a former GMA executive producer, said Hartman's very lack of journalistic background has been his key to success from the beginning.

"Television correspondents ask questions to show off how much they know," Merlis said. "The question is part of the performance. They dazzle you with their footwork. A Sam Donaldson or a Chris Wallace will say to Secretary of State George Shultz, 'Well, Mr. Secretary, is Resolution 242 doomed?' A print reporter might ask the same question, but he'll insert a paragraph explaining it. Not television correspondents. They ask and Shultz gives the answer he'd give a print reporter and the viewer is sitting there scratching his head.

"Well, David didn't know what Resolution 242 was either, so he'd ask, and the news producers would be holding their eyes and clutching their stomachs and sticking their fingers down their throats, but the audience was tuning in in droves."

Hartman joined Good Morning America when ABC created it to replace the failing A.M. America in 1975. He was tapped for the job on the strength of a documentary he had made in which he narrated the on-camera birth of a baby, but television critics saw only the prime-time series doctor from The Bold Ones and the teacher from Lucas Tanner. Taking umbrage over an actor's invasion of the sacrosanct news business, they beat him up in print at every opportunity.

"Marvin Kittman TV critic for Newsday once wrote, 'The reason Hartman went into this area is that he had exhausted his capacities in the acting field,' " Hartman said with a chuckle. "I'm not sure he's not right."

Kittman's dig, however, is the only one that elicits humor. Others have been far more cruel, raising the specter of the merciless killer with the gun, and the accusations obviously still hurt. A 1981 article in the Ladies Home Journal tarred Hartman as "a giant ego, corrupted by power, who isn't very nice to underlings or female staffers."

Nancy Dussault and Sandy Hill, two of Hartman's former co-interviewers (even his current partner, Joan Lunden, does not carry the title of "co- host"), left the show with headlined bitterness, but the implication that Hartman does not like women left him fuming.

"That's a joke," he said. "That's ridiculous. That's one of the dumbest remarks. Why is 80 percent of our staff women? Most of our producers are women and have been ever since we started. If you'd hang around here for a week, you'd find how stupid that is."

Another former associate, speaking on the condition that he not be identified by name, called Hartman "arbitrary and capricious" and "a driven perfectionist who is very tough to work for."

"He has a very bad habit of fixing on the last negative thing he hears and assuming that's the general consensus," the former associate said. "It's easy to plant seeds of doubt about anybody in David's mind because he's always looking for the negative, and that's unfortunate for those who work around him. It creates an atmosphere where office politics are a hideous vipers' nest."

Hartman bowed to "perfectionist" and "tough," but questions about the rest of the charges, like criticism of his show, drew angry fire.

"I won't respond to lies," he said. "The only reason you can ask that question is because you've read a few columns that continually get repeated and repeated and repeated from the past. If you watched this operation for a week, you never would have to ask. . . .

"Am I demanding? Yes. Am I a driven perfectionist? Probably. But the goal, I think, is worthy of the title. I accept that. Amen. Terrific! I can be very tough to work for under these circumstances. We have 10 hours a week to present to millions of people in this country who depend on us to get information that they can believe, that is comprehensive, that is fair, that is useful and that is presented in an interesting way. That is no small challenge."